Against INTERSTELLAR

The news is in, and it’s conclusive: INTERSTELLAR is a mess. Overstuffed, overcooked, overlong, and under-thought. Nothing is to be gained from the experience because there’s nothing there. It’s an excuse for a story, made in defense of Nolan’s trying to create visualisations that will woo viewers into placing him among greats like Kubrick and Tarkovsky.

It’s said that INTERSTELLAR is a philosophical piece of cinema—it’s not. It’s a giant ruse. There are no answers because it asks no questions. It’s a presentation of the denials of liberalism and the escapism it charges into to avoid reflection on the consequence-free interaction with time and space it desires.

Endlessly better arthouse and pop-philosophical works have been put forward for consideration this year, from HER to LUCY. These films earn the meditation they present because they tell a story—not just one we need to hear, but one at all. The characters, the people, the humans undergo something. Nolan’s characters are but a series of allegories and archetypes, masquerading as would-be people, waxing vapidness.

I understand that hundreds of hours of rendering time were put into the creation of the black hole we see in the film. At my most generous, I can only reasonably imagine that this is one great, meta-comment on the film and the values that underpin it: that is, contra Nietzsche’s warning as to gazing long into an abyss, humanity has out done itself—the abyss, repulsed by our nihilism, has elected to spit us back out.